Monday, February 18, 2013

Week Seventy One.

Hello there everyone,

So guess what, today was transfer day, and guess who was transfered. I was. After serving 8 months in Várzea i left to go to my last area in my mission for my last transfer. When i found out the news i was pretty sad, because i wanted to finish my misison in the area i passed the most time, and where i knew the people. I was able to say good bye to a few people. Alot of the people in the ward were sad to see me go. But i know that the Lord really puts us where we need to go. I loved my time In Várzea and my time with Sister Menezes. We were able to learn alot of things together, and she because like my sister. Everything there will stay in my heart. My companions, the ward, the people, the experiences, the adventures, everything.

When i got to the transfer this morning i found out that i was going to be with Sister Sampyo, who i have already lived with her in my first area for 5 months, so i was pretty excited, we had a great time together. She´s from Argintina and is a blast. I am also living with 3 other Sisters, one of them is SIster Harris, my companion from the MTC. So we have quite an adventure in store for us this transfer. We are in a city right by the center of Recife, its on the beach. I dont know that much about the area right now, so i will let you guys know more next week.

The mission sure is like a the tides on the sand. THings come and go, but they all happen for a reason. There are the ups and downs, the friendships, and the conversions, and everything else that the mission has instore. But It all passes by super fast. I really can not believe that i am going into my last transfer, my last 6 weeks of my mission are starting now, and i still have so much to learn and do, but i have also learned more in this last year and few months then ever before. I truely love the mission for everything that it has instore for us. I am so eternaly greatful for our Heavenly Father that i have this oportunity to serve him, and be part of this great work. I know that he always blesses us in our lives and we can recieve the blessings from it, some times we cant see them but they are there.

Thank you for all of the support you guys give me and the missionary work. I hope everyone has a great week!

LOVE,
Sister Rebecca Nelson

Monday, February 11, 2013

Week Seventy.

Hello there everyone,

So this week has been a bit crazy. This week started the festivities of Carnaval, the biggest drinking, partying, ect. holiday in Brazil. So we have been having to come home early this wek to advoid anything and to avoid all the parties in the streets. (here they like to have their parties in the streets and everyone is drunk). And we are about half way through it, but tomorrow will be the worse day. But we will see what happens. really its been pretty tranquil, because most of the action happens down town, so everyone leaves our area to go there. But in the midst of all that we had a miracle happen a baptism. And everything this week seemed like it wa working against us to have this baptism. Everyone wanted to dismark it, move the date and gave every excuse in the book. All of it really did make sence, it was during the holiday, everyone was traveling, all the youth (the baptism was a Young Woman) were at EFY and everything seemed to go wrong. But Sister Menezes and I knew in our hearts that we wanted and needed to make this baptism work this week. We said a prayer one day and went out to solve all the problems and we could really see the Lords hand in our work, everything feel acording to plan. We got to the baptism and had some members who were a big help and helped us alot with the baptism, it was great.

In all this confussion Sister Menezes and I knew that it would be hard to work at the end of the week, so we set out strong at the begining of the week to try and accomplish our goals, and we were able to do it. WE were able to get our goals compleate at the beging of the week, because sure enough at the end of the week everything fell through and was hard to work like we wanted to. But all in all it was a great week. This week is the last week of this transfer. Trasfers are next Monday, so we will see for my last transfer if i will stay here or go to another area, we will see. But thank you everyone for your support and your love. Untill next week.

Sister Rebecca Nelson

Monday, February 4, 2013

Week Sixty Nine.

Hello there everyone,

So another week has passed by and we are now in February, and we all know hos fast February passes, it just flies right by. But this week was a great week. Sister Menezes and I were working really hard this week. This transfer gave us a new spark in our work and we have just been trying to blow things over here and working really hard. We have been really into setting goals and these types of things. So this week we had an interesting experiences, somethings earlier in the week kept falling through and we were not were we wanted to be, so we were praying alot and trying to excersie our faith. Then on Friday after lunch we decided to make contacts. In an hour we knocked 6 doors, for of them net us in and we were able to teach 4 lessons and find 7 new people to teach. We were truely greatful for the Lord and his helping hand in this work. Its funny to think sometimes that we are trying to sacrifice evrything that we have to do his will and his work, but yet even after all that, we need his help still, to get us through the day. But I am truely greatful the mercy and grace that he has for us.

This week we were then able to find alot of new people to teach. We are always trying to find new people and do our best in this work. We are really trying to live this missionary motto: help other come unto Christ. Sister Menezes work amazingly together because we are very similar, but sometimes thats a bad thing, because when one isn磘 bold the other one isn磘 either, when one doesn磘 want to take a leap, the other stayes behind too, haha. So we have been working on that to be bold and brave these weeks.We found a quote the other week from Emma Smith that we are using ``Do Something Extraordinary!创 That is our goal and that is what we are trying to do each and every day.

Thank you everyone for your support and your love. This missionary work is something that is growing and will continue to grow and i am greatful to be a part of it. I love the mission and I love my Savior and i know that he loves each and everyone of us. I hope that everyone has a great week.

Love,
Sister Rebecca Nelson

Monday, January 28, 2013

Week Sixty Eight.

Hello there everyone,

I hope that everyone had a great week. Today i am compleating 1 year and 4 months on the misison. I can´t believe it. And I cant believe how fast it has gone by, and also how fast it is quickly coming to an end too. This week we had a kin of motivational training with the president. He came and spoke with our zone and really gave us animation to baptize and do this work. Now we are ready to get out there, we are just waiting for the investigators to follow us, haha.

This week we had a few cool things happen with some action from the ward as they were helping us and we were helping them. One afternoon we went out with the young Womans President to make visits to the less active memnbers. And guess what one of the young woman came back to church. She just needed a push and is even going to all the activities. We went to a recent converts house who has become less active and we dont know why, because he has great potentiol, and the Bishop showed up to help us with the visit and was able to give some great advice to him. Another day we went to an activity that the youth had to give the message, we were able to bring and investigator and a less active, so it was pretty great.

Again this week we were trying to work very hard, and of course things fell through. I notice a trend in the mission, it is like a rollercoaster. You always have your ups and your downs. Sometimes when you are working your hardest you see the least amount of results, but with pacients and hard work you can always get back up. Somehting i have really come to learn on the misison (and the Presidents traing cme to comfirm this this week) is that in our hardest times we need to be our strongest, and we can never loose our animation, we always need to keep our heads held high with a smile on to continue the work. But i am truely blessed to have Sister Menezes with me to do this work. We have set alot of goals and are compleating them as the weeks go by. We have a few people that we are trying to get ready for baptism this up coming month, so we will see.

Yesterday and a block party for Carnival right infront of our house, there were huge trailors of speakers on the street and everything, it was crazy. But we decided to avoid it and go home early (from the advice of the members). BUt we are keeping things safe and well conected with the spirit. I am continuing to work hard and loving the work. Untill next week.

Love Sister Nelson

Monday, January 21, 2013

Week Sixty Seven.

Hello there everyone.

So this week was pretty good. We worked really hard this week, didnt see many results of the work, but you know that is alright, we keep our heads up high. So as Sister Menezes and i are going to stay together for another transfer we decided to make a ton of goals this transfer, so every week we are going to focus one something new to better our work. So we started this week and things have been getting alot better. On the mission they always tell us: find, teach, baptize. So this week we spend alot of time finding ei contacts, with a bunch of people and were able to teach some of them too, so we found new people to teach. We do this every week, but this week we upped our goal by atleast doubling it! And we were able to compleate our goal. So we worked really hard this week and were able to compleate all of our goals. But when we got to church on Sunday we didnt have any investigators, or even less actives or recent converts. I think that everyone went on vacation this week or something. So douring the gospel principles class it was the teacher and us! And that was it. It was a bit weird. BUt we keep our heads up and our hope held high.

But that is about it for my week. Wasnt that interesting, we just worked a ton. I now have holes in all of my shoes, and am just hoping they will hold up for about 3 months, haha. But everything is good hear. I am happy and loving this work. I love working with my companion SIster Menezes. We are just trying to work our hardest and our best. We are trueling trying to live the mission of angels here in Brazil! Love everyone and hope you guys have a great week.

Love,
Sister Rebecca Nelson

Monday, January 14, 2013

Week Sixty Six.


Hello there everyone,

So today was transfer day, and guess what... nothing happened. I was thinking that i would leave Várzea this transfer but i am staying. I feel a bit weird just because this is only my second area, i passed 7 months in my first area, and already have 7 months in this area. But on the other hand i love the ward and the people here, and i love my companion Sister Menezes, so in many ways i am still happy that i am staying, just weird that i am still in my second area. But everything happens for a reason. And me and Sister Menezes are working very well together, so there is no reason to really change anything. I am truly blessed to get to work with her. But a lot of the members didn't want me to leave, and many were super happy when they found out that i was staying. 

But this week was pretty in the normal. We were running around a lot trying to help some of the people here, who really needed help in somethings. So we were busy with that and busy with trying to do our normal everyday stuff. But other then that there is nothing that out of the ordinary that happened this week. One things that was pretty cool was last night. The stake relief society president is in the ward here and was giving a training and wanted my help translating a video that was in English for the training. So i helped out,  no problem. After wards a lot of people came up and complemented me on how well i speak. everyone was super impressed. I felt pretty good. But i would hope at this point in my mission that i would be speaking well, haha. 

But i really don't have any good stories to tell this week or anything that cool. But Sister Menezes and i are just continuing to work super hard each and every day. I am grateful that i have the opportunity to learn every day with her. She really is amazing. She helps me become a better person. But we have a lot of goals for this transfer and we are going to try and put all of these things in practice. 

But thank you everyone for all of your support and all the love that you have given me. I hope that everyone has a great week.

Love,
Sister Rebecca Nelson

PS - I believe you guys can start a count down, i have about 11 more weeks until I can see everyone's bright smiling faces

Monday, January 7, 2013

Week Sixty Five.

Happy New Year to Everybody!

I hope that everyone had a great new year. As we can see the world didn't end, nothing exploded (except for fireworks) and we are here for a fresh new start in the year 2014. New Years for missionaries isn't that exciting, because we were able to have a good time. One of the irmas at church invited us to her house to have dinner with her and her family new years eve. We then went to our house and waited until midnight. We almost ended up falling asleep, but we were able to stay awake luckily enough. Because we live on the top floor of the apartment building we were able to see quite a few fireworks, but two streets in front of us they were having there own little show, see we watched that and then uneventfully went to bed, but there were parties going on all night long so it was a bit hard to sleep. Then New years day, because it was a Holiday everyone was a parties and drinking so we stuck with the safe route and visited Less Actives, So it made for a pretty good day. 

Unfortunately I don't have that much to tell for this week, because we were trying to get off of a holiday and it was a bit hard working and getting in the hang of things. One day we ended up walking in circles trying to visit people, another we went to another area to make contacts. But i do have stories to tell about the animals in our area...

So first off since we have been in the new year it has been raining almost everyday for at least little bit. So when the rain come here the frogs come out, and sometimes there not just frogs but toads too!!! So this story I am about to tell you all happened in one day. We were walking to lunch and we saw a huge toad that was dead and it was laying on its back and everything it was pretty gross. We then went into this area that always has a bit of wild life, I've seen monkeys there twice. But there is a swap there and the members said that there is alligator that live there too, so we went there trying to look for alligator. But we didn't find any. Then as we left lunch the irma went there and said very calmly, oh look there´s an alligator there. I Saw an ALLIGATOR!!! It was pretty cool, but it was sleeping, and still pretty young and small. But they caught one there the day before 2M. But as we were leaving that area a man was trying to heard the houses in the street with a motorcycle, the first time that I've seen that. I then didn't look to see where they were. Me and Sister Menezes then looked back and saw that these ponies were all running right at us!!!! So we ran and hid behind this super small tree (like it would really do anything) but luckily they went another way. Then at night we were walking home, close to were we saw the dead toad earlier, and i almost stepped right on one!! I didn't see it, and it almost hopped on my foot. So i jumped to the other side of my companion screaming. and he people at the bus stop right in front us were laughing. It was super funny. But they were cool about it. But wow didn't it scare me. haha.

So that was mainly my adventures for this week. This week is the last week in this transfer so who knows if i will be transferred next week or not. But we were able to make great goals for this last week, and we are going to work super hard with all that we have. Some council that someone gave me was to live the mission of Angels my last little time while I have on the mission. I have a bit less then 3 months left, and i cant believe how fast that it has gone by, it really is flying right by. So i am going to make the best of what i can this last little while i have and work my hardest. I am very grateful for the help that the Lord gives me while i am hear on my mission, and the support that everyone give me. Love you guys, and hope everyone has an amazing week.

Love,
Sister Rebecca Nelson